I’ve wondered what, in current society, makes people receptive to superhero movies. Certainly cinematic technology has become advanced enough to make these movies possible, in ways that make Richard Donner, director of 1978’s Superman, drool. And the sense that we citizens are somehow powerless against overwhelming, arbitrary villains, has become pointed since the 2008 financial services collapse. But something in recent rhetoric has changed my mind.
“Hero” language has attached itself to Americans deemed “essential workers” during this crisis. Journalists have dubbed grocery store employees COVID-19’s Unsung Heroes. Political cartoons show the Avengers and the Justice League welcoming nurses into the ranks. Where once you had to die in combat, or at least serve during wartime, to be yclept “heroic,” now you need only have a job exempt from shelter-in-place orders, and suddenly, you’re a superhero.
Except the recent spate of superhero movies, especially the MCU, have repeatedly emphasized that heroes don’t want anything. Steve Rogers becomes Captain America because he believes fighting Nazis is simply right. Thor dies for his friends and is resurrected as a hero; he even has Jesus’ hairstyle. Probably the greediest MCU protagonist, Tony Stark, becomes Iron Man because he wants to repudiate his former war-profiteering career.
Comparing drive-thru employees who brave getting coughed on by anonymous strangers, to the Avengers, certainly seems noble. COVID-19 is certainly as arbitrary as a Chitauri invasion. But these workers aren’t selflessly putting themselves on the line to combat massive, world-destroying evil. These workers are mostly low-paid, not unionized, and keep working in pandemic conditions because they need the paycheck. A paycheck which Captain America, as I recall, doesn’t receive.
Superheroes not only don’t expect rewards for doing right, they actively expect destruction. In The First Avenger, Steve Rogers jumps on a grenade to save his unit, discovering only later that it’s a dummy. In Avengers: Endgame, Tony Stark wears the Infinity Gauntlet, knowing that doing so will destroy him. It isn’t enough that heroes do what’s right; they must accept the constant imminence of death to become truly heroic.
Consider the culmination of The First Avenger. Rogers, now fully Captain America, has a promised date with Peggy Carter, but Red Skull has weapons trained on Manhattan. Rogers could, reasonably, refuse the suicide mission. He has a life awaiting him, and beating Red Skull will mean certain destruction, since nobody else can fly his airship. But Rogers negates himself, even unto death, because saving humanity means more than personal fulfillment.
When media figures compare grocery checkers to superheroes, they purportedly mean cashiers, and other “essential workers,” do important work that keeps human civilization chugging productively during adverse times. But, in classic dog-whistle fashion, they have a second-tier meaning: heroes don’t ask for rewards. They’re tacitly telling cashiers, burger flippers, janitors, construction workers, delivery drivers, and nurses: any future demands you make on our economy are null and void in advance.
These people do difficult jobs under adverse circumstances, even under ideal conditions. Stocking grocery shelves on third shift is arduous, mind-numbing, and often causes back strain. Janitors often have to deal with whatever their higher-ups considered too disgusting to touch themselves. I left burger flipping after two days when I realized how common third-degree burns were among the kitchen staff. And all these jobs pay really, really poorly.
Powerful people have worked hard to prevent low-wage workers, like our “essential workers,” from unionizing, demanding better pay, and getting medical protection. But now, watching these workers get compared to superheroes, I realize we’ve participated in a propaganda campaign so subtle, it’s taken a pandemic to unveil it. Disney, which owns Marvel, has peddled the idea that heroes shouldn’t ask for basic protections. They’ve weaponized the word “hero.”
Some critics, including superhero writers, may say I’m inserting political messages which the artists didn’t necessarily intend. Certainly, I don’t think most writers did this consciously. But if I’ve learned anything from watching politics and pop culture, it’s that whenever the mass media starts calling ordinary people “heroes,” they’re calling you to die. They do it in war, and now, they’re doing it in pandemic.
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